The Biden administration imposed sanctions on May 30 on 17 people and organizations it says are distributing equipment used in producing illicit pills that frequently include fentanyl. This synthetic opioid painkiller is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine.
Spearheaded by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the action also involves the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP).
The administration placed the sanctions on seven organizations and six people in China, and one organization and three people in Mexico, engaged in selling pill presses, die molds, and other equipment used to make pills laced with fentanyl that include counterfeit trademark stamps.
Avila called the move “a good step forward” but did not think it went far enough.
“These are sanctions against certain individuals and certain businesses, but they’re not sanctions against the governments themselves. That’s what I think ... would be a much bigger impact if you actually place sanctions on the government of Mexico and, of course, the government of China because we know that they’re both in connection, responsible for that fentanyl coming into our country,” Avila told “China in Focus” on NTD, the sister media outlet of The Epoch Times.
He pointed to the statement by Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson issued the same day.
“Treasury’s sanctions target every stage of the deadly supply chain fueling the surge in fentanyl poisonings and deaths across the country,” said Nelson.
Target Money Laundering
In Avila’s opinion, targeting money laundering operations would be an effective way to harm the cartels.“This is where you hurt the criminal organizations by seizing their assets, freezing a lot of their assets, their bank accounts, their properties and such, that are basically coming through illicit activity,” Avila, who is also the author of the book “Agent Under Fire,” said.
“And this would be a great way ... to put a dent, at least, on holding them back a little bit, because the cartels are making billions of dollars with the fentanyl, and obviously with the human trafficking as well. But once you start hitting them in the pocketbook, that’s going to make a big difference because these cartels operate for power and money. So you start taking the money away, you will eventually take away the power as well,” he added.
Raise Youth Awareness
He further called to raise awareness among American youth about the dangers of fentanyl.“I'd love to see that public display and warning to our youth, especially on university campuses, in our schools, to really make everyone aware—the households, the parents—to make this a discussion, an everyday discussion, of how dangerous it is,” he said.
Avila singled out the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report in early May that stated that from 2016 through 2021, overdose deaths involving fentanyl increased from 5.7 per 100,000 to 21.6 per 100,000—a rise of 279 percent.
More than 150 people die daily from synthetic opioid (the classification that includes fentanyl) overdoses, according to the CDC.
“These deaths are obviously directly responsible back to the cartels in China who provide the chemicals and the precursors. And the cartels were distributing all around the United States and bringing it through the open southern border. So one of the solutions is to designate these cartels as foreign terrorist organizations,” Avila said.
